Free-agent pitcher Jeff Weaver is almost certainly leaving the Los Angeles Dodgers. Weaver led the Dodgers with a career-high 14 wins last year, but he and the team failed to reach an agreement on a new contract by Sunday night's 9 p.m. PST deadline. Now, the Dodgers are prohibited from signing him until May 1, and it's just about certain the 29-year-old right-hander will hook on with somebody else long before then. "I wish Jeff Weaver would be pitching for the Dodgers in 2006," general manager Ned Colletti said shortly after the deadline passed. "It's not going to happen. I wish there would have been a way we could have figured something out, but it turned out there was a difference in philosophy and a difference of opinion." Colletti has said for several weeks that it was a long shot that Weaver would return to the Dodgers. He earned $9.35 million with Los Angeles last season.